Villiers Touch

28. Russell Hastings

Hastings came down the hall with his tie at half-mast, collar open, entered the head office, and found Quint wasn’t alone-there was an elegant old man in a black Chesterfield, and a dark pretty girl.

Quint acknowledged his arrival in his wry English drawl: “Marvelous. Enter the hero.” There never was any real bite in Quint’s sarcasms; Hastings only smiled and shook hands when Quint introduced him to the visitors-Howard Claiborne, of Bierce, Claiborne amp; Myers, and Claiborne’s private secretary, Miss Goralski. Quint completed the introductions by intoning, “Russ Hastings, an attorney on my staff. Russ has been concentrating on the NCI matter, and I think it would be judicious to repeat what you’ve told me to him.”

Howard Claiborne gave Hastings a firm handshake and an unsmiling greeting. Quint indicated a chair, and Hastings settled in it after turning toward Miss Goralski but thinking better of offering to shake her hand: the girl seemed to be in a state of marked agitation, too distracted by nervous anxiety to do more than acknowledge him with a jerky nod of her pretty head.

Howard Claiborne cleared his throat and said, “My secretary and I seem to have become involved unwittingly in certain activities of a recent employee of mine-activities which, if not entirely illegal, could at least be described as extralegal. I think perhaps it would-”

“Excuse me,” Gordon Quint said. “It occurs to me we’ll save time if I ask one of the Justice Department chaps to sit in, so that you won’t have to go over it yet again. Unless you object?”

“Not at all,” Claiborne replied. “Miss Goralski was good enough to come to me with the information we’ve given you, and as I told you, I decided immediately to bring the entire matter to the attention of the authorities. By all means, let’s have the Justice Department.”

Quint nodded and reached for the phone; while he waited for his connection, he passed a sheaf of papers to Hastings and said, “Have a look through these.”

They were printed market letters and analysts’ bulletins, stacked in chronological order, beginning with two Standard amp; Poor’s yellow insert sheets on NCI and Heggins Aircraft dated a few weeks ago. One of the documents, ten days old, was the Albert Marlowe Bulletin, a market letter with a circulation in the hundreds of thousands-a hedging, pontifical tip sheet widely used by those who relied on forecasters’ predictions. Now and then it could have a marked influence on the Market.

It was headed “CONFIDENTIAL: FOR SUBSCRIBERS’ USE ONLY” and in typical Wall Streetese it said:

As the year develops, the economy has undergone a moderate readjustment, and even though there is no unanimity among economists, it is fair to estimate that, by and large, dividends will hold up well, though there will be a few instances of tax selling and casualties. Given the current slowdown in business it is doubtful there will be any short-term reverse in the present leveling-off trend, although with current high interest rates, only time will tell whether a slump across the board is in the offing. At the moment there is no sign of such a further deceleration.

NCI has advanced four points since recommended here in March, and we think that while near-term uncertainties exist, NCI has formed a sound base and will probably continue to rise steadily, although no one can guarantee against the unexpected.

Meanwhile it appears Heggins Aircraft may be ready to move. It may well be one of the sleepers of the year, when the public begins to recognize its potential under its new management’s dynamic programs of boldly planned expansion, continuing research and development, and forward-looking diversification.

Hastings read the rest of them, frowning and shaking his head and smiling wryly at intervals. Quint caught his eye, and Hastings said, “It’s inconceivable to me that so many subscribers can fall for this kind of idiocy. No real insider in his right mind is going to let a genuine hot tip out if he’s got any way to stop it. These writers are no more privy to inside information than the man in the street. The same people that believe this junk would never think of going into a high-stakes crap game on a stranger’s advice and on borrowed money.”

He saw the touch of a smile at the corner of Howard Claiborne’s stern mouth; he went on through the stack of bulletins, and it was only when he reached the end that he got the point. It was last Tuesday’s issue of the same market letter:

The economy remains in a moderate state of readjustment, and there is as yet no sign of acceleration in industrial capital investment.

Clearly, there must come times when circumstances force a recommendation to be rescinded. Since NCI was mentioned here last, changing factors have come to light which cast a cautionary glow over the company. Its relative position of strength would appear, perhaps, to have been affected somewhat adversely by the possibility that several of NCI’s important suppliers of patented chemical and mechanical components may soon seek other royalty outlets so as to add further increment to their patent-connected incomes. Royalties may be raised, and a careful analysis of the situation is therefore indicated at this time for those who see NCI as a possible investment.

Bill Burgess entered the office, nondescript and baggy in a seersucker suit. There was a round of handshaking, in which once again Miss Goralski did not engage. Burgess’ smile was friendly; he winked at Hastings and took a seat.

Quint said to him, “Will you do me a kind of unofficial favor, Bill?”

“I’ve learned not to give an answer to a blank-check question like that,” Burgess said apologetically. “But I’ll do as much as I can. What is it?”

“Just listen to what Mr. Claiborne has to say, and be willing to forget you heard any of it if we decide not to take action. Can you do that?”

“It’ll have to depend on what Mr. Claiborne has to say. If there’s evidence of a federal crime I can’t ignore it.”

Howard Claiborne said, “Let’s not pussyfoot around, Mr. Quint. If a crime has been committed, then by all means let’s put the culprit under arrest. If I can disregard the fact he’s distantly related to me, there’s no reason you can’t.”

“The point is,” Quint answered, “it might be better to put him under surveillance than to reveal our hand by arresting him prematurely. But I suppose we can decide that afterward, can’t we? If you’ll proceed now?”

Howard Claiborne nodded, adjusted his seat, and began to speak.

It was noon before Howard Claiborne and his secretary left Quint’s office. The door shut behind them, and Bill Burgess sat back with his legs crossed at right angles and his hands laced together behind his head. “Okay,” he said. “We’ve established those sheets were planted deliberately in Claiborne’s files for the obvious purpose of influencing Claiborne’s decisions. We’ve got Claiborne and his secretary willing to testify to Steve Wyatt’s machinations in his portfolio and the blackmail pressure he put on one of Melbard’s people to part with control of the company. The fingerprints might hold up-at any rate, we’ve got a pretty good case against Wyatt on half a dozen counts. Maybe it’s the break we need; anyhow, it looks like paydirt, and I do mean dirt.”

“If we can tie Wyatt to Villiers,” Hastings said. “All we’ve got is the girl’s testimony she saw them together once.”

Quint popped a ball of hard candy into his mouth. “I want to nail Villiers. I don’t care about Wyatt at this point. I don’t think it’s the proper time to blow the whistle on him. I should like to put surveillance on him and see where that leads us.”

Burgess nodded. He was scribbling in a pocket notebook, his head tilted and eyes half-shut against the smoke from a cigarette in his mouth corner. He put the notebook away and sat back, once again at ease, the picture of careless indolence, the archetypal civil servant. Yet throughout the entire session he had watched with a stare of concentration that indicated his good quick mind was racing, hard at work behind the guarded face.

Russ Hastings looked at him, and looked at Quint, and said, “I’m still a novice at all this, but my instinct is to screw caution. What good does it do to wait for an airtight case if by that time the crook’s dead of old age or fled to Brazil and shipped the money into an anonymous numbered account in Switzerland where we can never get our hands on it? I think we want to stop Villiers before he guts NCI, not after.”

Bill Burgess grinned at Quint. “If you boys had a few dozen more like Russ, instead of that pack of bureaucratic nutless wonders…”

Quint said gently, “Let’s dispense with the interservice rivalry, shall we? Go on, Russ, I’m listening.”

Hastings spread his hands. “Maybe my approach is crude. It’s the way we used to work in political investigations. I’d have a federal court issue a bench warrant for Wyatt’s arrest. I’d charge him with illegal manipulation of the Wakeman Fund-I wouldn’t say a word about NCI or Mason Villiers. No point in spelling it out in block caps that we’re after Villiers. If we’re lucky, Villiers will just think it’s a rough break, but he’ll feel safe enough not to pull in his horns. Once we arrest Wyatt, we can try to break him down-offer him immunity from prosecution in return for his testimony against Villiers.”

Quint said, “You’re assuming Wyatt knows enough about Villiers’ operations to do us some good.”

Bill Burgess said, “I’d be willing to take the chance. Arrest the pipsqueak and scare the pants off him. Keep pushing him before he gets a chance to cool off-maybe he’ll spill something, and once he’s started, he may as well spill the whole thing. In the meantime, I can ask the Canadian securities cops to clamp the lid on those boiler rooms in Montreal. A surprise raid just might turn up documentary evidence to help us knock Villiers over.”

“It’s a long risk, isn’t it?” Quint said. “If Villiers has covered his tracks well enough, he may get off scot free. He rarely allows his own name to appear on paper anywhere in his dealings-it’s always done through fronts.”

Burgess said, “Hold on a minute before you make that decision, Gordon. I was on my way up to Russ’s office when your call caught me-I’ve got some news on the case, and it’ll save time to spin it out now for both of you. It has a bearing.” He looked at his watch. “There’s quite a bit to cover-have you got time?”

“Go ahead.”

“All right. We’ve had a team working around the clock on Villiers’ background, and we’ve had some luck. Partly because there aren’t many lone wolves left in Wall Street-the big action comes from institutions now, they’re all big staffs of college men, dry organization types straight out of those conformity molds they call executive training programs. An individualist sticks out like a sore thumb and people remember him.”

“Villiers has always been a standout, ever since he was a kid. He thinks he’s buried his past, but nobody that flamboyant can really expect to be forgotten. We pulled big crews of trained men off other jobs to run him all the way back to the place where he was born, and when you put a lot of people on a thorough job you’re bound to hit a lucky break somewhere along the line-you make your own luck. Anyway, we’ve got a mobster in jail in Chicago, goes by the name of Manny Berkowitz, and we’ve been pumping him for months. He’s an accountant for the mob, and I think he wants to be this year’s Joe Valachi. One of our men out there knew Berkowitz used to be tied in with Salvatore Senna-the button you put me onto in Montreal, Russ-and we put two and two together and asked Berkowitz if he ever knew Mason Villiers. It was the right question. Berkowitz has known Villiers since they were twelve years old together, and he’s got no reason not to talk.”

“So here’s what we’ve got. Villiers has manufactured a phony background for himself that would have been impossible to check out if it hadn’t been for Berkowitz. The facts: Villiers was born in Chicago, out of wedlock. He was taken in by a Catholic orphanage and put up for adoption, but he was a hard-boiled brat even then and nobody wanted to adopt him. When he was two years old he was christened Mark Valentine by the sisters. He spent ten or eleven years in the orphanage. Evidently he was naturally brilliant as a student, but he didn’t have a single friend, and he hated the nuns and he hated the orphanage. He ran away when he was eleven or so, and Berkowitz first met him peddling the streets down on the South Side. According to Berkowitz, he was always ambitious and greedy, and even from the first he operated in epic style. From the time he was old enough to count, Villiers wanted to be rich. Not just comfortably well off, but the richest man in the country. You’ve got to consider this guy came up from the bottom-a bottom so far down none of us have ever even seen it. According to Berkowitz, when the two of them were thirteen they had to kill and eat pigeons. They got jobs pearl diving in a hotel kitchen in Cicero. It wasn’t too long before they’d started making contacts with minor-league mobsters. Villiers ran with the pack for a while, but he was never really part of it-he could never work with an organization above him, and the organization could never trust him.”

“He really started out when he was about nineteen. He seems to have educated himself in libraries, mainly-he never spent any time in school after he left the orphanage. But at nineteen he had a hell of a vocabulary and the brains to go with it. He saw a chance to buy the capital stock of a bankrupt company for two thousand dollars of borrowed money at a sheriff’s auction in Wisconsin. He had to borrow it from loan sharks in the mob, but it gave him a foothold-an established corporate name-and he’s never stopped climbing since then. He got together with Berkowitz, and the two of them put the company into trivial production, just enough to make it look alive. Then they brought in a couple of other partners and started trading the stock back and forth among themselves. Pretty soon the over-the-counter market took note of it. The public watched for a while and decided it was an active stock, so they started to fool with it too, and so the price went up. Naturally, that was when Villiers and his partners pulled out. They took healthy profits after they’d churned the stock, and they left the public holding the bag.”

Quint murmured, “It’s a little game that’s probably been played only a hundred thousand times. But they never learn out there, do they?”

Burgess smiled and nodded; he went on: “Villiers paid off the loan sharks and went into corporate finance for himself. He established an insurance company, chartered in Maryland, where the laws are pretty loose, and he issued reams of paper and used it to buy stock in other companies. Pretty soon he was just trading his own stock back and forth the same old way, but the public saw all the activity going on, and they kept moving in. Villiers took handsome profits and moved on into the plastics business by using Lee Central Plastics Company’s own assets to buy control of the company. It seems to have been a watertight job he did with that one. He issued insurance-company securities and sold them to Lee Central Plastics in exchange for Lee Central stock. Got control, and shifted the watered insurance stock back into a dummy pocket quick enough to get it off Lee’s books before the next annual report came due. Everybody knows he had to have some weapon to hold over Lee’s directors to put the deal through but nobody ever proved anything.”

“While he was in the middle of the Lee Central thing he was working another interesting stunt at the same time-starting a rumor along the Street that the Federal Reserve and the ICC were going to raise margin requirements. He did a hell of a job of planting information, sort of like this plant he’s pulled through Wyatt on Claiborne’s outfit. He got the rumor working so well it drove stock prices down across the board for two days, and he was right in there selling short all the way, buying in at the bottom and riding it back to the top after the rumors fell apart. That kind of thing goes on all the time, I guess-painting the tape. Nobody ever proved Villiers started those rumors, of course, but the word got around somehow, and after that and the Lee Central thing, he’s had a hard time doing business down here. That’s why he shifted most of his base of operations to Canada.”

“He’s a con man, of course, a common swindler, but on a grand scale. That gives you the background-I think it may help, sometimes it’s easier to anticipate what a man will do when you know how he tends to operate in a given situation. All right, now we’re up to the present. That brings us to this item.” He took a folded newspaper proof sheet from his pocket and spread it open on Quint’s desk. “Better come over here and read it, Russ.”

This announcement is neither an offer to sell nor a solicitation of an offer to buy or exchange the securities referred to below. The Exchange Offer is made only by the Prospectus, copies of which may be obtained in any jurisdiction only from authorized dealers, including the undersigned.

NOTICE OF EXCHANGE OFFER TO HOLDERS OF NORTHEAST CONSOLIDATED INDUSTRIES, INC. COMMON STOCK BY HEGGINS AIRCRAFT CORP., INC.

Heggins Aircraft Corp., Inc., is offering by the Prospectus to exchange unlimited shares of Common Stock of Northeast Consolidated Industries, Inc., for Convertible 5?% Debentures of Heggins Aircraft Corp., Inc., in the ratio described below. The Exchange Offer will expire at 5:00 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time on September 30, 1970, unless extended by Heggins Aircraft or withdrawn as aforesaid.

There was a good deal more, and Hastings, peering over Quint’s thick shoulder, read all of it, right down to the italicized signature of Hackman and Greene, Registered Brokers.

Bill Burgess said, “We got that proof from the Times. The same ad’s set to run Monday in The Wall Street Journal and every big metropolitan daily in the country.”

“The fat,” Quint said obliviously, “is in the fire. Not only that, but the damnable thing about it is, he can do it. Legally. Unless we find a means to stop him.”

Bill Burgess said, “What I still don’t understand is how he managed to beef up Heggins so fast. Two weeks ago it was a dying company floundering on the verge of collapse. Now the price has shot up six points, and you hear nothing but glowing reports-and don’t tell me all of them were planted by Villiers’ people.”

“Part of them,” Hastings said. “The rest of it must have been done by cooking the books. A lot of things. I’ll lay a few examples on you to give you the drift. First, the company deals in a low-down-payment product-airplanes. Say a plane costs fifty thousand and the customer buys it with five thousand down. Ordinarily you report only the five thousand as income. But when Villiers took over, suppose his accountants cooked the books by inflating earnings with the whole thing in the income column-they report the full scale price as income, not just the down payment. Shady, but legal. They can juggle the inventory accounts to make the assets look greater. They can bring in their own team of auditors, who’ve been coached to show how depreciation has been taken inaccurately, and fiddle with earned-surplus figures and net working capital and other vagaries. They can report the company’s subsidiaries at book value instead of original cost. They can choose between accelerated depreciation and straight-line depreciation. They can take research costs immediately instead of amortizing them over a five-year period. They can announce they’re going to grant stock options, which aren’t charged to income, in lieu of cash bonuses. They can credit capital gains to income. They can, and did, declare a cash dividend last week to increase stockholder confidence. Villiers has created a bull market in Heggins stock overnight by operations like that and by putting out sales literature that convinces the readers it’s a good company to invest in. All kinds of happy talk about talented scientists and engineers, capable financial leadership, and a new management that’s balanced in depth so that the loss of a key exec won’t wreck the company. A spirit of innovation. An aggressive intent to exploit existing markets and create new ones. A good record of sales expansion five years ago, and never mind the years in between. Hell, our boy’s been a one-man inflation for Heggins stock. And it’s easy enough to see what he’s doing now. It’s relatively cheap for one company to take over another company by issuing interest-bearing Chinese money like these Heggins debentures in Villiers’ ad. And I’m not even sure the NCI board of directors will put up a fight.”

Quint said sharply, “Why the devil shouldn’t they?”

It was Burgess who answered him. “Because according to our information, at least two of them have got themselves into a trap that Villiers ingeniously set for them. And if two of them fell into the trap, it’s possible one or two others are in it too that we don’t know about. If it makes up a majority of the board, then the rest of the board members can’t act-they’ve got to sit on their hands while Villiers moves right in.”

Quint said, “Explain yourselves. What sort of trap?”

Hastings said, “Villiers bought himself a speculator’s dream when he took over Heggins. God knows where he got the money. Some of it was an exchange for Melbard Chemical stock, but just the same, he had to raise an incredible amount of capital to pull it off. What he did, in the old-fashioned phrase, he cornered the market in Heggins. There weren’t a hell of a lot of outstanding shares drifting around the market anyway. Villiers planted word, just before he bought the company, that Heggins was overvalued and bound for collapse. He planted it in the right places. Amos Singman and Daniel Silverstein and maybe two or three other NCI board members, among others. They expected a dive in price, and so they sold Heggins short, in big bundles.”

“Now, of course, the price is up, and they’ve got to cover their short sales, and they suddenly find out Villiers has bought up all the shares. Put simply, the short sellers owe Villiers half a million shares, and to pay him they’ve got to buy the shares from him and then give them back to him-and he’s got every legal right to name the price. So he’s got them in a bind, and the only way they can squirm out of it is to sit it out while he moves into NCI.”

Quint said, “It can’t be legal. He’s a control stockholder and he didn’t advise us of his movements in Heggins stock. We can nail him for fraud and failure to divulge inside information.”

“Nuts,” Burgess said sourly. “Do you think he’s done all this in his own name? You can be damn sure Villiers personally doesn’t own more than five percent of Heggins’ outstanding stock. It all belongs to Swiss trusts, and you know damn well how far you’d get trying to prove they belong to him. Even if we could hit him with that technicality, the worst he’d suffer would be a slap on the wrist and a meaningless fine.”

Quint made a face. “You can take a man out of the gutter, but Villiers has never washed off the smell, has he?”

Burgess showed his unhappy consternation by letting his hand dangle limply from his wrist and shaking it back and forth as if wearily drying his fingertips. “We can’t lay a finger on him unless we can prove fraud or extortionate coercion, and you can bet your ass none of the jokers involved are going to admit a thing-unless we can crack Steve Wyatt open.”

Quint put his big head down, thinking. Bill Burgess said, “Don’t forget, we’ve only been moving on this thing for a matter of hours and days. Villiers has had years to plan it out. He’s not an impulsive man-he wouldn’t have this ad in the papers if he hadn’t thought it through. He doesn’t blurt things out, and he doesn’t make easy mistakes.” He shook his head apologetically and uttered a dispirited little laugh.

Hastings shot to his feet. It made Quint’s head skew back with dignified astonishment. Hastings strode back and forth impatiently, hair falling over his eye; he said, “It’s not a question of finding some technical loophole to collar him with. There’s got to be a way to nail the bastard to the wall, pin him like a butterfly so he’ll never get loose.”

Quint murmured, “Do I detect a note of personal animosity? He’s been seen with your wife, I understand.”

“My ex-wife, damn it. And what does it matter whether it’s personal? The man’s guilty of a criminal assault, half of Wall Street will know it by Monday morning, nobody can touch him legally, and we sit here trying to decide if we’ve got enough evidence to hang a parking ticket on him! For God’s sake, there is no such thing as a little rape-we’ve got to stop him cold.”

Quint cocked his head to one side. “You’re really quite an emotional being underneath it all, aren’t you?”

Hastings made an exasperated sound.

The fat man said, “How would you handle it, then? Strap on a revolver and shoot it out with him in Wall Street at high noon?”

He was in no frame of mind for Quint’s brand of drollery; he formed his big hands into loose fists. “Just turn me loose on him, Gordon. Ill bring him down.”

“Large talk,” Quint observed, not visibly stirred. “Are you deliberately implying I’m the only thing standing between you and Villiers’ downfall?”

The skin on Hastings’ face tightened. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

Bill Burgess said uncomfortably, “Cool it down, hey?”

But Hastings wasn’t through. He put his hands on Quint’s desk. “You gave me a speech about why you always go by the book. But this time we’re not in the kind of game that’s played according to Hoyle. It’s a dirty back-alley crap game and if you want to win it you don’t carry your book of Hoyle along, you carry a knife and a set of brass knuckles instead-otherwise you’re a dead loser.”

Quint’s eyes glinted. “I’ll only ask it again, Russ. What do you want? How would you handle it? I’ll listen-sit down and talk.”

He went back to his chair and cuffed the hair back out of his eyes; he glanced at Burgess and said, “Villiers can make his scheme work only as long as NCI doesn’t fight him. He knows he’s got the directors on the run. He must know Judd won’t fight him. With a relatively small cash investment he’s trying to take over a giant corporation worth billions. It can work only if people are willing to give him their NCI shares. If he had to pay for those shares, he’d be stopped-he hasn’t got the money, nobody’s got that kind of money. All right-I say we go to the directors, and we make it hotter for them than he’s making it. We fight him with his own weapons. We force them to switch sides and fight him. Faced with a proxy fight right down to the wire, he’ll go under; he hasn’t got the kind of financial backing it would take to fight it through. Even if he did try to go all the way with it, at least it would give us more time to dig into this thing and develop evidence against him. There have got to be chinks in his armor, and the longer we force him to fight, the more likely he is to make the kind of mistakes that can hang him.”

“I suppose you know exactly how to force the NCI board to turn against him?”

“If there’s one thing I learned with Jim Speed,” Hastings said softly, “it’s how to put pressure on people.”

“I don’t like it.”

“I didn’t think you would.”

“Go on,” Quint said, “both of you. Get out of here and leave me in peace.”

“You’re not buying it, then?”

“I didn’t say that, did I?” Quint did not smile; he glowered. “Every decision I make in this office is subject to review by higher authority, Russ. I can’t authorize you to use threats or extortion. On the other hand, you’re under no obligation to explain to me the nature of every stitch you sew into the fabric of your case. If you get results, that’s all anyone will notice. If you fail, it’s your neck, not mine. Clear?”

“Clear,” Hastings said. Feeling vital and alive, full of juices, he bolted out of the chair and strode to the door. “Come on, Bill.”

Burgess trailed him into his own office. Miss Sprague was out to lunch; there were three or four phone messages on his desk. He glanced through them and put them aside. “Damn it,” he said, “I feel good. For the first time in months.”

“Something you can sink your teeth into,” Burgess said. “I’ve been watching you flounder around like a headless chicken. Waiting for you to snap out of it. Ever since you got divorced, you’ve been acting as if you didn’t know who you were or what you wanted.”

Hastings gave him a look of surprise. “You see a lot, don’t you? You’re right, you know. Until a short time ago I was wandering around as if I’d lost myself somewhere in all the confusion. It’s like a nightmare-you keep trying to see yourself in terms of other people, like looking in a distorted mirror. I fell in love with a woman I didn’t even know. Whipped up all kinds of enthusiasm for a job Elliot Judd offered me when I knew all the time it wasn’t for me, it had nothing to do with me.”

“Forget it, Russ. You’ve turned the leaf over-I’ve seen the change in you. You could have ignored this NCI trouble, it was nothing but a vague hunch-but you sank both hands in it right up to the elbows.”

“Sure I did. Because right down inside I’m a gut-fighter, Bill. It took a long time to discover it, and I feel like a fool. But something clicked on this job. I’m a predator just like Mason Villiers. I like a good fight. I need to be where it’s at. Right down at bedrock, I’ve got the temperament of a good old-fashioned cop. Set me down in a precinct station house and I’ll bet I’d blend right into the woodwork.”

Burgess grinned at him. In a different voice, Hastings said, “I’m going to enjoy matching wits with Mason Villiers. And I think I’m going to beat him. It can’t be done Quint’s way, but it can be done.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“I’ve got to have you with me right down to the wire, Bill, and it may get sticky. We’re going to tromp on some important toes.”

“Which Quint won’t know about?”

“Which Quint won’t know about.”

“Then I guess my boss better not know about it either,” Burgess said, and spread his grin even wider. “Where do we start?”

“With Ansel Cleland. Villiers got himself a corner on Heggins, and he’s using it to whip Cleland’s board into line. All right. Cleland can get back at him by staging a bear raid on stock in every company Villiers controls. He puts together a syndicate which sells Villiers short and publicizes the fact. They force the market price of those stocks down to levels where Villiers’ creditors will sell him out to protect their loans-I’m taking it for granted Villiers has hocked every share he owns to finance this operation. Maybe he’ll pull in his horns, and maybe he won’t, but at least he’ll have to scramble to raise the cash to pay off his margins, and when a man like Villiers goes after cash in a hurry, he’s likely to do something we can nail him for.”

“Fine. But how do we persuade Cleland to stage a counterraid against him?”

“Any stockholder has a right to file a private suit demanding a full accounting of the board’s activities. All we need to do is find one man who owns one share of NCI and who’s willing to file suit. We explain that to Cleland.”

“I see. It puts the heat on his directors-‘full disclosure.’”

“Exactly right. Cleland’s directors will have to fight Villiers, no matter what it costs them, because if they don’t, our stockholder suit will drag them into court, and they’ll have to admit out loud, under oath, that they knuckled under to Villiers’ extortion. They won’t dare have it brought out in open court. They’ll fight Villiers.”

Burgess said mildly, “It’s all pretty shady, isn’t it? I mean, I don’t know anywhere in the regulations where it says the SEC or my department are empowered to pull this kind of stunt. It’s pretty raw-what if Quint finds out about it?”

“Why don’t we worry about that if and when it happens?”

“Okay. You’re the boss.” Burgess stood up. “Who goes to Cleland? You or me?”

“We both do. When he knows both our departments are cooperating on it, he’ll be impressed.”

“If he only knew,” Burgess said, and chuckled.

Hastings reached for the phone. “I want Villiers hung in a proxy fight where the whole world can see him fall down. If we don’t pin him to the wall with legal evidence, at least we’ll make damn sure he never does business in this town again.”

“You don’t mind fighting a little dirty yourself, do you?”

“I told you,” Hastings said, finding Cleland’s number in the Wheeldex and beginning to dial, “I’m a cop. My job is to stop the bad guys-any way I can.”